You should know that I fall in love with you every day. Even when we’re busy, even when I’m not myself, even when you are not here. This city is doused in shades of —-, and it has never been so beautiful. Sometimes it’s the red of dancing as we wait on dinner to cook, sometimes it’s that delicate light blue post sits kiss, sometimes it’s the shiny silver of snow sliding in Brooklyn or the tender yellow of walking to work on the same sidewalk you carried me down. It’s the burgundy when you give a dollar to the man at the bus station, the verdant green of when you make my parents laugh, the royal purple as you gush about your work. In the wrong light, it’s the color of fear, that one day I’ll see the hues and be without you. But in your arms, by your side, that color fades into the sparkle of faraway stars, and it too is a thing of beauty.
To my dear, sweet, gentle girl, the one who still believes in love, the one who eats like a bird, the one who still bleeds and wants to paint with that pain, I am so sorry to have woken you up. I have done a poor job of protecting you, and I should never have let you run free. To the other one of me, the one with the knives sharpened from clotted blood, the one in black and white, the one who bites, you are vicious and brave and I love you. And I am sorry to blunt your edges, but you will swing and you will cut me up inside trying to keep me from harm. I can feel you crying, screaming. And I hurt
“I want to write a book about nothing,” he said. “About ordinary lives. Plain. Uneventful. Boring even. There’s happiness there. That’s life.” I looked at him from across the table. I commended his ambition. All the same, I could see past his lie. He would not be happy with an ordinary life. I don’t think I would be either.